Context
Urban regeneration depends not only on economic development but also on making a place where people want to live and work. Folkestone recognised an opportunity to support cultural regeneration as a special driver for change.
Heaven is a Place Where Nothing Ever Happens, 2008. Nathan Coley. Photo by Thierry Bal.
A place to live and work - and visit
The town’s major private sector employer is the Saga Group and the company was quick to realise that if it was to attract and retain high quality staff, it would need to ensure that Folkestone remained a place where people wanted to live and work, and visit. This would require affordable housing stock, good education facilities and an efficient transport system, as well as attractive shops, entertainment and leisure facilities.
The area around the Old High Street, a narrow cobbled road that almost tumbles down to the harbour, and the once-fashionable Tontine Street epitomised Folkestone’s decline - a previously attractive neighbourhood in various states of deterioration, with empty premises, vacant lots and a sense of decay. In 2001 a partnership, led the Metropole Gallery and Shepway District Council, began to explore the possibilities of developing this area into a creative quarter which, coupled with a strong education component, might support the regeneration of Folkestone.
A creative quarter alone was unlikely to regenerate the town but it could act as a significant driver for change, particularly when coupled with significant academic developments, commercial investment in the town centre and other environmental improvements such as the Lottery-funded Lower Leas Coastal Park.
Creating a creative quarter
The chair of the Metropole board was Roger De Haan, the Chairman and owner of Saga, and its Director was Nick Ewbank. When De Haan sold Saga in 2004 for £1.34 billion, he used the mechanism of two trusts, the Roger De Haan Family Trust and the Creative Foundation (with Ewbank as its Director), to renovate and then animate the creative quarter. The Family Trust purchases and improves old buildings and uses gap sites to create new ones; these are leased to the Creative Foundation for a peppercorn rent over 125 years. In turn the Foundation manages the property portfolio, letting buildings to a lively mix of galleries, creative businesses and cafés.
Living the dream
To date, the De Haan Trust has invested over £35 million in the creative quarter project and purchased 80 properties occupied by about 150 tenants. A key aim is to protect the tenants from the urban regeneration cycle best defined by the Toronto graffiti of the 1990s, ’Artists are the storm troopers of gentrification’. As Roger De Haan told Building, “Often, artists are used to help regenerate an area and once it’s regenerated they’re forced out because rents are too high.” Regeneration can rarely be rushed and both the De Haan Trust and the Creative Foundation are prepared to take the long view.
In addition to its role as landlord, the Creative Foundation (on which both SEEDA and the district council are represented) is responsible for a organising a programme of events, including exhibitions, a children’s festival, the annual Folkestone Literary Festival and most recently the first Folkestone Triennial. The aim is to see Folkestone’s cultural calendar shaped by an ambitious programme of fourteen festivals each year. Many of these will make use of Kent County Council-funded Quarterhouse, the new performing arts and business centre (by Alison Brooks Architects) opening in Tontine Street early in 2009.
Meanwhile Folkestone now has its first higher education provision, the University Centre as well as the Cube providing adult learning classes and a new Folkestone Academy.